


How I figured out my coworker is a vampire

by drcalvin



Category: Csínom Palkó - Farkas/Dékany/Lőrinczy
Genre: Actors, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Comedy, Crack, Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 13:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16913334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/pseuds/drcalvin
Summary: A what-if story about Feri as a vampire (but still actor) and the people who discovered this





	1. Peti

**Author's Note:**

> Unproofed and posted here as-is, before Tumblr implodes in itself. Since I seem to have no other backups. Inspired by Carmarthen's ask "Csínom Palkó, vampire Feri, if that's cracky enough to do when you've only seen it once?"

“So… are you really Béri Balogh Ádám?”

“What? Of course not, you dimwit,” Feri spat – literally. Until his fangs receded, it was difficult to speak without excess saliva ruining his delivery. He’d at least managed to train away the lisp after the first decade.

Peti rubbed the quickly fading puncture marks on his neck, not seeming half as bothered as Feri had expected. “Well, I figured, even if he wasn’t from round Transylvania and all…”

“I was turned in 1963! I’m not even a hundred years old! And why aren’t you shaking in terror from this unholy abomination?”

Blinking guilelessly at him, Peti shrugged. “I dunno… You’ve always been kind of. Vampirical, I guess? I’m used to it.” He held up his ever-present phone. “And I checked on the internet, the average rate of suction the human mouth could create through two small bite holes isn’t so high, and since you avoided my jugular even when you went, y'know –”

“The technical term is blood frenzy,” Feri said, looking away. “And it hasn’t happened since before the fall of communism since people KNOW not to bother me until I’ve had my special coffee in the evening!”

“Ahhh!” Peti grinned. “Like, like – I dun drink vine? Only with coffee, instead.”

“You are the most imbecilic little…” his mutterings trailed off. “Will you tell anyone?”

“Tell? On you, maestro? Of course not.” Peti got up, stumbling only a little, and Feri caught him grudgingly. “As long as you let me take a selfie. I’ve already got the hashtags planned out.”


	2. Kárló

They lost his luggage. Unbelievable. They took the whole company – by rented bus and dodgy budget airlines – through Belgium, France and Germany and everything is fine. They tour the Hungarian countryside the next summer, and Feri clutches his special coffee during every bus ride, and nothing happens.

They fly to Finland, and Lufthansa sends his luggage to Singapore.

Which means Feri only has blood replacement for two days, since he put an emergency dose in his carry-on, and they’re heading into Russia for a week. Tomorrow. The plane won’t even have landed in Singapore before tonight’s performance!

But the show must go on, and Feri performs, and he smiles for the local press, and he drinks his (unadulterated) coffee and doesn’t look too closely at delicious necks and smooth skinned girls and smiling boys…

In Estonia, he is saddened to learn that they don’t serve blutwurst for breakfast, though he eats as much half-raw fish as he can stomach and tells himself it’s practically the same thing. Iron! And… things, slimy, fish-tasty things which aren’t at all like the beating pulse at the inner thigh of an excited –

Feri stuffs his mouth with more pickled fish, using the revolting texture to ground himself; performance nights always make him hungry, and they played for a full house yesterday. The airline thinks the luggage will catch up in Moscow. He only has to get through Riga and Petersburg first.

Entirely doable. He did his first audition half-starved, because he’d stayed in practicing lines rather than try to hunt, and he’s still convinced it gave him an extra edge.

(Of course, he had also locked himself into a cellar in the days leading up to the audition, rather than spend hours in a cramped bus with a cohort of delicious…)

“Hey, Feri. You’ve got a minute?”

He feels Kárló’s heavy hand fall onto his shoulder and nearly jumps out of his skin. Damn it, he needs to keep his head together.

The last thing he expects, after Kárló has bullied him into his room with a flimsy excuse about needing some feedback after yesterday’s performance (Yesterdays performance was a runaway success; Feri suspects he may have instinctively mesmerized the audience a little, because while he’s used to getting invitations after a good evening, the entire orchestra at once, and three light technicians, seems a little excessive).

Kárló fiddles with his cufflink, and Feri turns his gaze from the vein so close to the surface. Hotel art; internationally awful, but it may work as an appetite suppressant.

“What did you need me for then?” he asks.

“Here, man. Before you start nibbling on the kids.”

“What?”

A big, fleshy, juicy arm… Kárló isn’t his type at all, but when he shoves his pulsating wrist into Feri’s face, it’s all he can do to keep his incisors under control.

“I’m not, I don’t – What!”

“Look, I’m not an idiot, all right? And my grand uncle Béla… you’ve met him?” When Feri only glares, he continues. “Well, I figured, he was at the opera for about ten years, until that musical came and made everyone start looking too closely at the shadows, and I think you were working in Budapest too then. Anyway, then he retired for a while, has a little house in the Italian alps now, sings for tourists.” Kárló winked. “Nibbles on them too.”

“Wait. Béla S., world-class basso, and, and –”

“Vampire.”

“Yes, that. He’s your uncle?”

“The one and only. He’s the one who convinced me to go into theater!” Kárló smacked the vein on his arm, and Feri allowed himself a second look.

He put up some more protests, but increasingly weaker. And, as Kárló so rightly pointed out, better him and his substantial body mass, rather than some skinny youngster with too much nerves who might panic and trigger an attack reflex.

Kárló’s a lifelong smoker, and afterward, Feri warns him that his cholesterol isn’t at optimum levels either. It’s not the blood of innocence (technical virginity affects flavor a lot less than in the stories, but mental states have more influence than you’d think), but nor is it trying to suck a few watery drops out of a raw steak, and he knows he’s incurred a debt of gratitude.

It’s easy to promise to visit old Béla, who’s apparently growing a bit lonesome up on his mountain. Not that Féri is hard to convince – that voice? He’ll pay in literal blood to add it to the company.


	3. Zsuzsika

You don’t shit where you eat. And you don’t eat theater critics who pan you, unless you want the whole shadowy world of things that go bump in the night to start interfering with your (un)life.

Feri has always been good at sticking to these rules, part of why he managed to work as an actor in Hungary. Never an easy career, even less so with his dietary needs.

There weren’t as many vampires in Transylvania as pop culture would have one believe. Partially because old vampires were awfully territorial, also because many refuse to acknowledge maps drawn after their birth to darkness. After a number of armies returned from the vampire-staking missions anemic and semi-worshipful of the pale aristocrats they’d been sent to root out, even the communists realized that certain bloodsuckers were better left alone. Even if they claimed a territory that hadn’t existed since before the Ottoman invasion – vampires their age rarely bothered to get involved in mortal politics.

Even so, Central Europe was pretty full up on vampires and had a hierarchy going back to the Black Plague. 

The fad for pale skin and a consumptive body shape, which was most pleasantly acquired by help of vampire (and didn’t cause hacking up of lungs as a side-effect), had allowed a younger community to grow in the cities with modernization. But there was a reason so many vampires had risked the journey to the New World, and it’s less established pecking order, even before the the great wars.

Of course, then a group of clever people in a laboratory somewhere – some said the USA, some said the West Germans; Feri suspected Japan if only because it was eminently practical and not very flashy – came up with the synthetic blood. Not good enough to keep a human alive, but good enough to feed a vampire.

The first versions tasted like ersatz coffee doctored with ammonia, but suddenly, vampires weren’t forced to compete with each other for food in the same way. The old ones sniffed haughtily (Feri would not admit it under torture, but he may have copied some mannerism from the few ancients he’d met. Three hundred years being a top predator instilled more effortless style than any drama teacher could hope to teach) and continued to sip the local populace as they had always done. 

Feri’s generation, weaned on doctored milk and barley coffee, had less problems adjusting.

Nevertheless, there were a surplus of vampires in Budapest and not everyone felt that trying for a career in the spotlight was appropriate. Some expressed this by scathing critiques in national newspapers, others just tried to eat Feri’s co-lead on premier night.

In retrospect, proposing to his co-star to keep her safe and invested enough to keep the show going had not been his brightest moment. At least they both came to their senses before the wedding.

Well.

She came to her senses when she found Feri in the wardrobe with her understudy, but _all in all_ it had been a mutually beneficial decision to not get further involved. And now he knew she could yield a stake very dangerously, so.

Still, Feri had enough experience as an actor and as a vampire, to know that no matter how annoying they were, you must not eat your critics. Stake them? Possibly; depended a bit on their connections and lineage, but less out of bounds.

“Zsuzsika, my darling butterfly. Do you have a minute?” he ground out, staring down at the newspaper.

“One moment, dear, I just need to finish my hair.”

“No, Zsuzsika, I don’t have a moment! Wardobe, now!”

The murder hadn’t netted the lurid headline – this being a tabloid, that was devoted to something more salacious by far – but the details were enough to raise Feri’s hackles. Bloodless corpse found in hotel bathtub… police suspect murder at a different site… famous theater critic, much mourned by colleges…

This particular crappy tabloid only had friendly relations with one other newspaper that employed their own theater critic. The same one who had last week written down their Csínom Palkó in the most lurid therms. The one Zsuzsika hooked in the opera bar yesterday.

“Who did this?” Feri asked, trying to keep his growling to a minimum. The actors weren’t his chattel as such, and anyway he was a modern vampire who didn’t – “Who the hell did you feed a theater critic to, and why did you take that risk?” he exploded, when Zsuzsika only hemmed and hawed. “Do you have any idea about that kind of rabble, they, they – he could’ve EATEN you! Mid-season! Then what would we have done?”

“Oh Feri!” Her fake tears cleared up, once she realized he was more worried than angry at her. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me! My dearest… she’s an old, old friend who has no connections to the company. And she doesn’t like the taste of women. Alas; she’s held up well over the years, if I may say so myself.”

Feri didn’t like the taste of a lot of things, but that hadn’t stopped him from eating them now and then. He tried to explained as much without outing himself, to very little effect.

“Besides, it’s bad taste to handle bad reviews like that,” he grumbled. “Gauche. Awful. Makes it seem like we’ve got nothing to come with artistically!”

“But why would anyone blame us? Yes, I was seen with that horrid little man a few hours before his, ah, accident, but so what? I have plenty of alibi for later.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Shall I tell you about it.”

“No, thank you, I trust you were very. Diligent.” Feri gave her a stiff smile. “The reason I am upset is because of the old friend you used, Zsuzsika; she’s not a good sort. Trust me.”

“Pish-tosh, you’ve listened to too many prejudiced old farts! Did you know, that modern vampires don’t even need to – Iiiieeee!”

“It’s all right,” Feri yelled when someone banged the door to the wardrobe, “we’re practicing! Future roles. Now bugger off or I’ll forget to call you up for audition!”

That got rid of them. Grumbling, Feri poked his fangs, trying to will them back down. Not happening for another five minutes at least. “Ready to listen, Zsuzsika?” he asked, looking down at the woman squirming in his grip.

“How dare you,” she said. “I’ve never – all these years, Feri! All these years, and your insane schedules and your coffee cravings and I’ve never complained, not once! And you don’t even trust me enough?”

No power on earth could’ve kept him from rolling his eyes wildly, except the knowledge that they were two hours from curtain and Zsuzsika had a temper. “It’s not something I flaunt, exactly.”

“But me? Aren’t I trustworthy? Wait, does that mean Borika –”

“Not the topic,” Feri warned. “The topic was you feeding our negative reviewers to _other_ vampires.”

“Oh.” Zsuzsika backed down. “Yes, I can see how that’s upsetting. But then I hope you’ll do your job a bit snappier next time, dear boy?”

“What.”

“You know who you should get rid of? That awful Swede, who called my voice ‘screechy’! My voice, I can’t even. Hmpf! It’s a good thing you explained the situation to me, or I might just have had to ask Jutka-dear to accompany me to Stockholm. She’s afraid of heights and flying, would you believe it?”

“Nobody is getting rid of anyone. And, Jutka, who is this Jutka? Why are you on first-name basis with other vampires? Zsuzsika! Are you listening to me!”

“Elza! Elza, do you remember who that awful little man we met in Brussels was? Yes, no hair, exactly.”

“Zsuzsika!”


End file.
